Mine might be the last generation of people who understand freedom.
I do not mean God-given, constitutionally-guaranteed freedom, although that too is in danger (but that’s a column for another day). I mean the true freedom for kids to be kids.
As has been too often said by writers both better and worse than me, mine was the last generation to be turned loose after breakfast and told to return by the time the streetlights came on, or if there was a lack of streetlights, when the sun began to touch to horizon. We might come home for lunch or a snack, bringing a hungry mongrel horde of similar rapscallions along unannounced, or we might forage for food. If we lacked sufficient change for a cold drink, and couldn’t find sufficient returnable bottles to exchange for the deposit, we drank from the handiest garden hose we could find. Sometimes we even asked first.
I was told on a several occasions that if I got hungry during the day, I should go to a certain widow lady’s house and ask permission to grab a pear or apple from her trees, which were as old and gnarled as she seemed. I was also admonished to be sure I gathered some for the widow as well, since that was just good manners. I always did so, and on more than one occasion earned a piece of pound cake or pie to go with the fruits of my labors.
We rode bicycles for ridiculous distances, carrying pocketknives, fishing poles, and/or BB guns (later swapping the air rifles for the real thing). We used black tape to stick flashlights on our bikes, or saved up to buy store-bought light kits with D-cell batteries and occasionally, the generators that pressed the side of your tire.
We hid in libraries when there were too many bullies to fight off, or the thunderstorm was too dangerous to ride out. We ate crawfish captured in ditches and boiled in tin cans beside the crustacean’s former home. We caught wild things, stuffed them in our pockets or lunchboxes, and brought them home to triumphantly present to our parents as new pets.
I am blessed to know a few children being passively reared as I was, but most are like a family I know that doesn’t let their kids play unsupervised in the broad expanse of their front yard, due to the possibility of getting in the road or being kidnapped. There are no registered sex offenders anywhere near this one particular family, and the front yard is fenced. They have very good neighbors, and I’m sure there are cameras everywhere. It’s statistically unlikely that the kids are actually in danger in their front yard, but I cannot in good conscience fault parents who protect their children these days. I am far more concerned about the dangers contained in the electronic devices that the kids stare at day in and day out, oftentimes while seated comfortably in front an electronic babysitter disguised as a gaming system.
My mother would actually shoo me out of the house, along with my dog, tell me she loved me, to be careful, and to come home if I got hungry or before dark, whichever came first. Now I will admit there was a surveillance system far better than the Life360 app or even the CIA’s satellites. Every stay-at-home mom, aunt, or grandmother could tell you the name of every kid that prowled their streets, along with the color and style of bicycle, air pressure in the tires of said bike, along with our height, weight, and the purchase date and price of the jeans we were constantly staining with bicycle chain oil, mud and occasionally blood.
Speaking of blood – we shed a lot of it. Bicycle crashes, sliding into base, jumping from places we had no business climbing, and occasionally fighting. One grandmother we all loved kept a supply of torn bedsheets and comfrey leaves close at hand. Her home sat conveniently near the bottom of a hill we loved to run our bikes down, and we required too much first aid to justify storebought bandages and salves, what with the way prices were rising. She literally came to us a few times as we lay dazed in the street at the end of a jump whose landing was less stellar than the preceding flight.
We were never far outside a watchful eye, but we were still free. I once got caught on some property that was posted, and politely but firmly told to leave and ask permission next time. I apologized and left, and pedaled my bike for home. One of my lawnmowing clients called me over to her porch for a lecture before I got home to yet another lecture. In my defense, the owner admitted his property wasn’t well marked, and he later welcomed us back – but it was still both frightening and unforgettable that somehow my misdeed was known before I had time to get home and concoct an excuse. Remember, there were no cell phones at this time.
We were deeply-tanned, elbow-scarred, knee-scraped and bug-bitten. Occasionally we were bruised from a fistfight over some matter of honor. We explored falling-down barns and houses, fought mock battles with BB guns, dirt clods and river cane, and sometimes rooted through trashcans when we were finished shattering those long fluorescent light bulbs that had been carefully placed in a dumpster behind the grocery store.
We had no phones, no tracking devices (other than our dogs and the Mom Network), and a very few video games shoved in beside aging pinball machines.
I see a few youngsters here and there who are roaming the streets like the wild dogs we once were, and sadly, I wonder if they are up to no good. Based on the language I hear spewing from the mouths of some of those driving the squatted trucks and straight-piped cars, I have to suspect the kids under them in age are the type of people who would have spent weeks standing at the dinner table with a stinging backside and a lesson learned by intolerant parents.
I don’t know all the reasons why kids can no longer be allowed to run free. I know the problems are not as simple as I’d like them to be, and they’re unlikely to change.
It saddens me, because there may never be another generation that understands the joy of being pushed out the door of a morning with nothing but your dog, a pocketknife and some change, along with the instructions to go “do something.”
Between electronics, societal fear, modern parenting and plain old laziness, there may never be another generation of kids who experience the glory of being so free.
